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Afghan conference calls for talks with Taliban
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Afghan conference calls for talks with Taliban
By KATHY GANNON and AMIR SHAH,Associated Press Writers -
Saturday, June 5
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KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai received a boost from a national conference of tribal, religious and civic leaders for his plans to approach the Taliban to talk peace. His more difficult challenge will be to convince insurgent leaders and the Obama administration.
Washington supports overtures to lower-level militants but thinks talks with top leaders will go nowhere until NATO-led and Afghan forces are successful in weakening the Taliban and strengthening the Afghan government.
The Taliban insist no talks are possible until foreign troops withdraw from the country _ a step Karzai cannot afford with the insurgency raging. U.S. officials contend the Taliban leadership feels it has little reason to negotiate because it believes it is winning the war.
Karzai, who organized the conference that ended Friday, clearly got what he wanted from it: a mandate for his peace efforts and his government months after his victory in an election tainted by fraud.
The three-day conference, or jirga, also represented the first major public debate in Afghanistan on how to end nearly nine years of war amid widespread belief here that the insurgency cannot be defeated militarily.
"The one significance of the jirga is that for the first time a collective and structured voice of Afghans for peace has been presented to the government and to the international community," said Nader Nadery, deputy chairman of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.
Some 1,500 delegates from across the country attended the jirga, held in a colossal tent on the grounds of a university in Kabul. While active militant leaders were not invited, some former Taliban and their sympathizers came. Many of them remain in contact with Taliban foot soldiers _ who till their farms by day and lay roadside bombs by night.
Nadery said it's these rank-and-file Taliban who could be pressed by their communities to embrace the peace process, particularly if backed by government incentives.
"It's significant for the Taliban to hear that Afghans from different walks of life ... are tired of war, are calling on them to at least talk peace," said Nadery. "The pressure from the communities won't be immediate but it could be the beginning."
As for the top leadership, the jirga's final resolution says insurgents who want to take part must cut their ties with foreign terrorist groups _ a clear reference to al-Qaida.
Taliban leaders like Mullah Mohammed Omar harbored Osama bin Laden and other planners of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the Unites States before a U.S.-led invasion ousted them from power later that year. The Taliban later rebounded as an insurgent movement, taking advantage of widespread discontent over government corruption and resentment among ethnic Pashtuns over the growing power of other ethnic groups.
The resolution calls for militants who join the peace process to be removed from a U.N. blacklist. The blacklist imposes travel and financial restrictions on 137 people associated with the Taliban.
The resolution also supports the release of Taliban prisoners in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and at Bagram Air Force Base north of the Afghan capital _ and Karzai promised to make that a priority as a goodwill gesture to the militants.
The Obama administration was quick to praise the efforts of the jirga.
"We thought that the peace jirga accomplished its objectives and has provided a national consensus to pursue a political strategy to reduce the danger posed by the insurgency," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
But any reconciliation talks will likely remain a long way off.
The Taliban rejected the jirga before it started, and their suicide attackers attempted to disrupt the opening by firing rockets at the tent.
Progress on a political resolution remains key to any U.S. exit strategy. Pakistan, Iran and other neighboring nations have a stake in any design of a post-conflict Afghanistan. Without a reconciliation strategy, NATO and its Afghan allies have few options other than to try for a decisive victory _ requiring a bigger investment in lives, treasure and time than the international coalition is prepared to make.
___
Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
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